[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - highway=scramble

Alan Mackie aamackie at gmail.com
Sat Sep 24 14:37:41 UTC 2022


On Fri, 23 Sept 2022, 20:58 Asa Hundert, <hungerburg at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you Volker for linking cai_scale. During my research on the
> subject, I learned, that the SAC itself is using its scales quite like
> the CAI, as a means to note hikers about requirements of what in OSM
> are called "routes", something, which starts at a POI and has a POI as
> its goal, where the most demanding section determines overall grade.
>
> It is just in openstreetmap, where the key derived from the SAC hiking
> scale could be used to create climbing-topo-like mappings, where
> difficulty over a route from a hut to a summit e.g. could change from
> easy to difficult back to easy and so on, in 5m increments, by
> splitting the route in several sections, in OSM called "ways", that
> could get separately graded.
>
> Such a practice is not widely used, mostly mappers that laid the
> groundwork did follow the SAC spirit, and drew a single way through
> from start to goal. Yet, I have seen such topo-like mappings too.
> Looking at the crossing of Monte Pirio, it is mapped as several ways
> all tagged demanding_mountain_hiking. Other pictures on the web show
> grade mountain_hiking there, so in my eyes, this is not a
> climbing-topo-like application of sac_scale, not in 5m sections, such
> I only observed on MTB grading, but at least in 100m sections, where
> the splits sometimes appear at questionable waypoints.
>
> I conceived of the proposed tag during RfC on "sport=mountaineering"
> on the community forum, where it was suggested to go for "highway=*"
> instead. A switch that I happily took part in. Feedback has been quite
> positive indeed. This is the trending base.
>
> Switching base key had other implications. For me, "highway=scramble"
> immediately became the "highway=unclassified" of the path multiverse.
> Lots of comments later, I must conclude, that for many though, it is
> perceived more a cousin of "highway=steps". I guess, a proposal that
> wants to win the voting and the mapping communities approval has to
> cater for the lazy and the busy mappers alike and take care, that it
> supports neither in tagging wars. WDT?
>

To me this sounds worse than steps because for most people use of handrails
is optional for steps, but for scramble the use of hands seems to be
expected. I would quite like these to be moved out of path to some other
value as I think this is a stronger difference than we already see for
other highway types.

As for extent I think we do as we do for other changes of this type
restrain it to places where the steps/ scramble/ surface type actually is.
Routers can display the "worst" with relative ease while map makers may
have to do a lot more processing.

I know that is more work than 'just' styling and throwing out tiles but I
don't think it is practical or desirable for us to maintain generalisation
information directly in the map data when we don't know if it wil be seen
as a small scale overview or as a highly detailed site plan. Different
consumers may choose completely different presentations even without
considering multiple uses. Some may choose to mark the whole way sequence
as difficult all the way back to the next branch point, other might choose
to render difficult passages as icons when they get too short to jump out
at someone with a print map.

If the (physical) route maintainer publishes overall difficulties then I
think this can be stored on the route independently to the specification
the individual way sections.

>
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